A Hunt of the Ages
by Flipout6
Summary: Two close friends enter a D.C-wide high-stakes hunting competition, lured by promises of wealth and fame that they require to pursue a mutual friend, an ex-NCR military trooper, across the country. But they are not the only ones after the prize, and the competition is more than happy to eliminate whoever stands in the way... OCs, eventual mild romance.
1. The Briefing

_Author's Notes: This story is linked with Tokyobleach's awesome story Orange Coloured Sky, taking place three years beforehand. The character Axelle Edwards is actually her character, not mine, although she is used with her creator's permission, and I check with Tokyobleach beforehand to make sure that she stays in character, so no need to worry about that. Jackson, however, is mine, as is the man they are pursuing._

_On a side note, constructive criticism is ALWAYS welcome._

* * *

"Well, this ought to be-"

"Interesting?"

"Nah, a hell of a lot of fun." Jackson grinned. His youthful face always held this kind of expression.

"A competition to hunt the deadliest monsters in the Wasteland is what you think of when you hear 'fun'?" Axelle raised an amused eyebrow, which unlike her cobalt hair was actually a regular color.

"Well..."

"Welcome, everybody! Sorry about the delay, I'm afraid I'm slowing down at my old age. I'm sure you all know why you're here-" Herbert Daring Dashwood descended the staircase leading up to the Tenpenny Tower apartments, wheezing and coughing. His voice, however, was still very much intact, and loud enough for everybody to hear.

Dozens of assorted figures were gathered in the Tower's lobby. Looking around, it was quite apparent to the two of them that there was going to be some stiff competition. Jackson was only one of several young hunters to attend the event, but there were also ghouls, raiders, and mercenaries, in particular two squads of nasty-looking Talon Company soldiers. Jackson found himself swallowing his excitement (and nervousness, though he'd never admit it.) as he tapped one foot impatiently on the carpet.

"The former residents would have a heart attack with all the dirty wasters in here." The 18 year-old noted offhand. "Although once the cross-dressers were done with them I suppose they weren't in much of a state to form an opinion. Ironic we have everybody's favourite cross-dresser in this room as we speak." He pointed at one of his friends across the lobby.

Axelle laughed, unconsciously trailing a finger across the scar on her exposed abdomen. "Yeah, most of the group is here. Well, except Versing..."

"Relax, I'll win this competition for everybody, get the money, and then we'll chase him. Also I'm probably going to hide a radroach in his sleeping bag. The feminine squeals shall be the stuff of _Legends. _Hey, wait a second..." Jackson pointed to a young woman on the other side of the lobby. "Well well well, what do we got here? Looks like I have some competition."

Axelle followed his gaze. A young, red-headed woman in combat armor stood by what looked to be a bodyguard, a six-foot-something ghoul in leather armor with a shotgun on his back. Their hardened, almost professional look was in stark contrast to Jackson and Axelle's simple clothing. Instead of leather armor, Jackson wore a cream sweater, a trader's cap and beige pants, while Axelle liked short-shorts and a tank top. "Is that-"

Jackson flashed a toothy grin. "Catie Ryan. The Wanderer's younger sister. Ha! Nice to see there's some real competition here. Wouldn't be fair otherwise." The youth's voice was trembling with excitement.

"There are rumors being tossed around that there's a missing sibling."

"All right, folks, quiet down and let the old man say his piece." Daring Dashwood had begun to speak once again, and the chatter died down in response. "Thank you. You all know as well as I do that the wastes can be an exciting place, but I thought to myself the other day, 'why not step it up a level?' My prime is long behind me, but I came up with something the entire DC area can pay attention to, cheer on, something to capture their interest and start conversations over dinner and beers." He cleared his throat, then continued. "A massive, dangerous hunt, spanning the entire Capital Wasteland. The beasts are big, but the reward is bigger. A competition so grand that the entire Capital Wasteland will speak of it for generations."

"Get to the point, old man!" One of the Talon Company mercenaries shouted rudely from a balcony.

"Yes, I've kept you waiting long enough, I apologize. The object of this hunt is simple: bring me proof that you've killed the appropriate beats, and I will reward you. Allowing a radio station to broadcast you escapades throughout the Wasteland has its benefits. Once one hunter has brought me the needed proof of a kill, I will accept no additional proof, so you will compete with your fellow hunters as well as going up against the most fearsome creatures this Wasteland has ever seen."

Jackson felt his pulse somehow quicken. He loved to hunt, but a huge competition and getting to bring a friend along? This was going to be awesome.

"The beasts you are hunting are no ordinary beasts. They are terrible, powerful monsters, some of the most vicious, most deadly predators in the entire wasteland, pinnacles amongst their species. Listen here, as I will not say this twice."

Jackson strained his excellent hearing to its limits.

"The creatures you are to target are as follows: Fafnir, the legendary deathclaw alpha male of the biggest deathclaw nest in the Capital Wasteland..." Jackson's eyes widened. That would be a hell of a trophy on his figurative wall. "...A Yao Guai, mutated by the FEV and twice the size of any of her species, known as 'Ursa.'" Jackson rolled his eyes. That was perhaps the least original name for a bear in the book. "A super mutant behemoth, the only beast in the list of which there is more than one. And finally, you must kill a terrible monster that stalks the waters of the Potomac...The oldest known Mirelurk King from Ronto to Point Lookout. There are quite a few names for this monster, but many of the locals know him as "Thresh". Any questions?"

"Yeah, where can we find these fuckin' things?" Another Talon Company merc demanded.

Herbert smiled devilishly. "That is for you to discover, my feisty friend. Go on, the hunt begins!"

Jackson and Axelle met outside the tower to discuss what they planned to do first.

"What do you think we should do? You're the hunter." Axelle asked.

"I've been thinking the same thing myself."

"We don't even know where we can find any of these things! I mean, sure that deathclaw will be in the sanctuary, but we don't know where that is!"

"Quite the contrary, the almighty Jackson knows exactly where we can find two of these." Jackson smirked with false bravado.

"Then let's hear it, we need to in this or else we'll never be able to fund a trip to wherever the hell Versing is going." Axelle placed her hands on her hips impatiently.

"I know where the Deathclaw Sanctuary is. Found it by accident one day when I stalked a herd of Brahmin into the area. And I also know where we can find a Behemoth for almost absolute certain. I'll tell you when we're out of earshot of the competition which I'm amazed Talon Company isn't mowing down yet." He glanced a look at the Talon Company mercs. He began walking to the northwest, and Axelle followed. Chaser, Jackson's dog, relieved himself on another hunter's leg before trotting over to Jackson.

Once they were well out of earshot of anybody else, Jackson spoke to Axelle as he walked. "I'm figuring we should go for the Deathclaw last. We could spend the entire hunt just trying to get past the other deathclaws in the sanctuary. If we secure the other three kills first, then whoever clears a path to Fafnir will have done so only to gain one out of four pieces of the puzzle. I know that there's an UNARMED Super Mutant Behemoth imprisoned at Evergreen mills. Out of every behemoth in the capital wasteland that one will be the easiest to take out."

"We're gonna shoot it while it's caged?"

"Sort of. We're gonna shoot it a few times, shoot the lock to its cage, let it kill every raider in the place, and then take the weakened Behemoth down."

"Jackson, I use a crowbar for combat."

"I solve yet another of your problems, then." He grinned and handed her the rarely-used .32 revolver that he used as a backup weapon, and all of his rounds. "It's pretty weak as far as guns go, but it's years ahead of that crowbar against anything stronger than you. Behemoth included."

Axelle held them gingerly, and then reluctantly put them on. "This pistol sucks, Jackson. You want me to shoot a behemoth with this?"

"Nah, I want you to kill some idiot raider with it and take HIS gun. Then we _both_ take down the behemoth."

"Says the one with the scoped .308." She teased, thumping Jackson's rifle, which he kept in a holster on his back.


	2. Raiders, Behemoths, and Plasma Rifles

Jackson spent most of the time amusing Axelle in any way he could to alleviate the tedium of travelling, which both gave him something to do and kept her laughing and happy. Boredom and sadness were two of Jackson's worst enemies. Occasionally he would play fetch with Chaser and make the dog run in circles before stumbling right into a tree from dizziness, or he'd tell stories he'd experienced and heard from his friends. One, for example, involved Jackson spraying himself with Brahmin pheromones so he could get closer to them without scaring them, only to be mistaken for a female by the alpha male.

"There wa much sniffing and running that day." Axelle laughed for a straight minute at that.

"Think we're getting close." Jackson announced with a dramatic flourish. "Now we just have to set up shop somewhere up on those big cliffs, we get you a better gun, and then I shoot our large green friend in the face."

They were smart enough not to walk in through the front entrance and instead crept along the top of the cliffs that let into the canyon that was Evergreen Mills. Jackson found them a nice little spot in between two rocks that had a perfect angle on the entire courtyard but was nice and hidden. He immediately went prone and shimmied his way into a comfortable shooting position. Axelle did the same, laying beside him and keeping her head down. In the face of such imminent danger she'd temporarily lost her sense of humor and replaced it with a serious disposition.

"We need to just get this done." She looked at the cage containing the behemoth. "It's HUGE, how are we supposed to kill that?"

"We shoot him enough times." Jackson wiggled a little bit and his lips pulled up into a mischievous, wicked smile that screamed 'I'm about to do something really stupid.' He aimed into his rifle's scope. "Alrighty, we have a bunch of idiots standing on the rafters that our prey doesn't have to stop over to smash into the ground, while the rest of these fools are gonna get stepped on. The couple of smart guys that'll be in the building'll do the most damage, maybe enough to actually hurt it. Then, once they've been reduced to a red smear on the pavement and we've sunken half our ammo into it, we just get to finish it off."

"I'll keep an eye out, in case you're seen." Axelle said.

"Don't worry, sun's shining on our backs, it won't make a super-bright light that gives us away."

"Is that why you picked this place?" She asked.

"No, I picked this place because..." His voice adopted a suggestive tone. "...This is where we make the magic happen." BOOM.

Jackson's first shot screamed out of the barrel of the rifle and met its mark in the Behemoth's skull. The loudest sound Jackson had ever heard tore from its throat and made his ears ring even from here. Axelle felt adrenaline pump through her veins, as did Jackson, whose ear-to-ear grin somehow got even wider.

"HOOO! BIG HOSS!" He cheered. The raiders were too busy wetting themselves to hear him. He shot the behemoth two more times in the face, and then destroyed the lock to the cage.

"WHAT THE FUCK!" Someone exclaimed as the Behemoth roared. Axelle turned around and looked at the raider that had come to investigate them talking.

Phillip the raider was having a bad day. He woke up at four in the morning when one of his drunken buddies urinated on his old Enclave powered armor, frying the circuits and causing an explosion that blew out the wall and half the room's occupants. Then he couldn't get back to sleep because so many people were wailing in agony and was forced to do a triple-shift of patrolling the perimeter of the camp, meaning he was stuck up here for whatever wasteland creature decided to take a bite, and he had a rash in places no man should have a rash, that nobody had any cream for. He began calming down, thinking "_okay, maybe things will get better." _He was actually beginning to enjoy his time away from the idiots he called friends when his power helmet (the ONLY part of his enclave armor that could be salvaged!) shattered into a million tiny pieces when a .308 bullet slammed into it from a mile and a half off, knocking him clean out.

He woke up an hour and a half later, terrified of being shot again, and hears talking from a few feet away. So, being the good little raider he was, he stood up and went to confront the source.

_"ROAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!" _Phillip wound up pissing himself, poor guy.

"WHAT THE FUCK!" Now there was a blue-haired girl looking at him when he had a wet spot on his crotch and a funny-lookin' bruise in the middle of his forehead. He grasped his plasma rifle and aimed it at her, looking forward to turning her into a puddle of goo, when a pile of fur jumped on him. "AUUUUUGHH! MOMMY! MAWW-MEEEEE!" He screamed, and then Axelle shot him in the face, ruining it. Great.

"Where did he get THAT?" Jackson asked, as Axelle took poor Phillip's rifle and ammo.

"Who cares, just roll with it."

"Crap, this means I can't make fun of your hair anymore."

"Now I can call you Howie whenever, I, want. HOWARD Jackson." She couldn't resist picking on him a bit despite her serious mood. Jackson groaned so loudly that she could hear it over the behemoth, the gunfire, and Jackson's own adrenaline-fuelled shouting.

Jackson kept firing at the Behemoth as it broke out of its cage (blew right through the doors, electrified or not.) and began decimating the raiders one by one. They screamed in fear as it quickly wiped them out. Gunfire came from the windows and filled the massive specimen with bullets of various sizes and calibers. After about five minutes of getting hit with every bullet Evergreen Mills had to offer, the mutant almost visibly slowed down. It was also at this point that every raider was wiped out, and Jackson's bullet pierced his skull. Enraged, it looked up at him.

"Uh...Elle? I think he sees us!"


	3. It all hits the fan

The Behemoth roared again, intent on squashing Jackson into a little puddle of gore. Jackson shot it in the groin.

"Yeah, stay standing after THAT." The Behemoth didn't flinch, and roared at him. Jackson's voice was reduced to a squeak. "Oh right, they're sterile."

The Behemoth, its sights set on these two humans and a dog, pounded across the ground towards the cliff and jumped, slamming into the cliff face and grabbing on to it. Roaring again, it began to climb up the cliff at a rapid pace.

"RUN BABY RUN!" Jackson exclaimed excitedly. Axelle found herself thinking that he had no fear, just more hyperactivity.

Jackson pointed his gun barrel downwards and shot the Behemoth once more in the head before it swiped at him, nearly knocking him off his feet. Cackling maniacally, he sprinted as fast as he could in the other direction (which was pretty damn fast. He was one of the most athletic and agile people on the face of the post-apocalyptic Earth.) and found himself right beside Axelle as the green monster reached the top and began thundering after him.

"Split up and shoot him in the back!" Axelle shouted, and Jackson careened off to the right as Axelle went the other way. Chaser stayed with Jackson, barking as excitedly as his master was shouting, like this was all a big game.

The Behemoth began chasing Jackson and Chaser, deciding to go after the louder target. Axelle began pumping plasma rounds into its back as she walked towards it. That way she wouldn't be caught by surprise if the Behemoth turned around but she wouldn't grow increasingly inaccurate with the battered weapon once the Behemoth gained enough distance on her. Jackson, feeling every footstep of the great beast, simply ran faster, but still it gained on him. Axelle watched in bug-eyed horror as it came within arms reach of her friend and swiped at him. Somehow he managed to jump completely _over _its arm, missing the blow entirely, while Chaser shied out of the way. When it brought its arm backwards in another attempt, Jackson did something most would think suicidal: He turned around and dove between its legs.

He stuck the landing and somersaulted when he hit the ground, landing spryly on his feet and sprinting full-tilt the other way. In the time it took the angry mutant to stop and turn around he had gained twice its body length on it, and it struggled to keep up. Once again, though, it slowly gained.

"Go for the face! SHOOT THE BUGGER IN THE FACE!" He shouted to Axelle, who adjusted her aim so that the plasma rounds were landing (and, as a result, superheating) its head. As round after round began to sink into its head, the Behemoth roared and changed targets, going after Axelle this time. "RUN!" He yelled, as the mutant passed him, gaining ground on Axelle faster than it had him. "Oh no you don't!" He somehow had the oxygen in his lungs to shout again.

"Jackson, don't!" Axelle exclaimed, as she saw him charge right after it with his rifle in one hand and his baseball bat (He like to call it the "Bat of Farther East".) in the other. She had no idea what possessed him to do that.

Jackson, however, started beating the Behemoth's ankles with the Bat of Farther East, occasionally falling back to shoot it in the back again. He hit it in the back of the foot repeatedly, intending not to hurt the creature but annoy it so it would go after him. He succeeded in annoying it, of course, but the result wasn't what he'd anticipated.

Axelle gasped when she saw her pursuer kick Jackson backwards like a human would scrape something off its foot, and feared the worst.

"I'M A BIRD!" Yeah, he was fine.

Jackson's lungs burned when he hit the ground, the air crushed from them, but he nonetheless stood up and started shooting at the Behemoth again. He was lucky that he only carried a few .32 rounds in favor of his .308's, because he'd fired so many rounds now that any average person would be out of ammo. But not Jackson, the fun shouldn't end because one was devoid of bullets.

"JACKSON!" Axelle screamed as the distance between her and her would-be executioner lessened with every step. She banked left and jumped over the side of the cliff, aiming for one of the train cars that still populated Evergreen Mills' railway tracks.

She made it, wincing as her legs throbbed in agony at the sizeable fall. The Behemoth jumped right down with her when she was two cabooses down, and crashed into it with such force that the entire train was knocked sideways off the tracks. Axelle was chucked off like a ragdoll and the mutant slipped and hit his head off the cliff in a manner not dissimilar to a human slipping on ice. Alarmed, Jackson cried her name as he saw her unmoving form lying in the dirt. He stumbled down the rock face and pressed the barrel of his rifle against the top of the beast's skull and pulled the trigger. The round blew right through its brain, and yet the beast kept going, picking him up with one hand and throwing him against one of the de-railed cabooses. He slammed into it with incredible force and lay there, slumped. If it wasn't for the Behemoth's dazed state he would have been violently killed on impact.

Axelle shook her head and struggled painfully to her feet, her left arm and leg completely numb but probably not broken, unaware of what had just happened. The great beast that she was supposedly 'hunting' also stood up. It caught her in its sight and started stumbling after her, head still reeling from the impact. Axelle cursed as she tried to run and couldn't, her limbs still numb. Through some incredible stroke of luck, the multiple head injuries were beginning to get to the Behemoth, who was stumbling after, more than once almost careening sideways into the train. It was still fast enough to catch her, however, and she found herself awkwardly shambling away from it as fast as she could. She looked desperately for any means of escape, her eyes sweeping over the remaining trains, the raider walkways, the mutant's cage-

-The cage!

The raiders kept the hulking horror contained using a reinforced electrified fence. If there was enough electricity there to keep even a Behemoth tame...

Axelle went after it, regaining feeling in her arms and legs slowly but surely. The behemoth gained its coordination a hell of a lot slower and growled with frustration as it tried in vain to catch up. Soon Axelle was sprinting full-tilt towards the machine that controlled the gates, and more importantly: The voltage controls.

The Behemoth roared and tried even harder to catch up, intending to catch and finish off this evasive prey in due time. It was still confused, but it began to gain speed. Slow at first, but then more, and more, and more...

Axelle reached the machine, looking frantically around for anything she could use. Gate switch? No, those had been destroyed. Power switch? It was already on... A-ha! Voltage! She grabbed the knob and cranked it from medium to high, to dangerously high, enough to disintegrate even one of the Behemoth's Overlord cousins.

"HA! Come get me, you ugly sonuva-" It was closing in alarmingly fast. Axelle sprinted inside the pen through the ruined gates, counting on the mutant's own stupidity to do as she planned. "Come on, Frankenstein! Or are you going to run home to momma?!" She waved her arms, intent on making him very, very angry at her.

The Behemoth's vision turned dark crimson with rage, as opposed to the usual bright(er) crimson. He sped up. He was going to catch puny human, he was going to squish and smash and crush puny human until she was a stain on his teeth. Nothing could stand in his way.

Axelle crowed in triumph as the Behemoth collided with the fence, not gaining enough momentum to break it down, and instead got caught on it. Most of its torso and its head pressed right against the metallic mesh, and hundreds of thousands of volts of electricity shot through every square inch of its grotesque body. It didn't scream, roar, howl, or anything. It twitched as the electrical circuit poured power into its body, and then it fell backwards, its entire body a blackened, burnt, smoking shell. The first kill of the hunt...was effectively in the bag.


	4. A moment by the fire

Axelle cheered triumphantly, even dancing a little bit.

"Ha! Did you see that, Jackson? ...Jackson?" There was groaning, and then she saw the battered youth crawl his way out from behind a train car.

"Well..." He cracked a smile that reached his eyes even in his current state, and laughed softly. "...I guess a bird has to land sometime, eh?" Axelle moved to him and helped him to his feet.

"What happened to _you, _Howie?" She asked, concerned.

"Well, I fell at high speeds into a metal tin."

"You tripped on your own feet? You?"

"Ah...no, he threw me." He started. "Crap, where'd he go?" His eyes fell on the blackened husk that was once a mighty beast. "How in the- You took him out? Without me?"

"Well no, not really. I mean this wouldn't have happened without you around."

"That is one HELL of a kill, Elle. Oh, Versing would kill me for using your pet name..." He stumbled up to it and pulled out his hunting knife. "Now to just cut off his head..."

"The head? We can't carry the head."

"Ah...well, what else can we carry? An eyeball?"

"Try one of his fingers."

"Alright, just give me the rest of my lifetime and then some..." He started sawing off its finger with the knife, using a sledgehammer from one of the dead raiders to break through the bone, and after ten minutes of getting his hands dirty held the severed digit in his hands. "You killed it, you wanna carry it?"

Axelle pretended to think. "Hmmm... No thanks. Why don't you be a gentleman and carry it for me?"

Jackson rolled his eyes but nonetheless pocketed it and crinkled his nose. "Great, mutie stains on my pants for eternity. Abraxo and some water, they said..."

They set up shop in an old pre-war town not far from Evergreen Mills, and Jackson decided that nighttime, which was when all the bad-boy predators came out, would be a great time to go hunting.

"Are you stupid?" Axelle asked him.

"I hunt at night all the time. Hell, it'll be even safer this time because the smell of Super Mutant tends to scare away anything that wants to take a bite out of me. Deathclaws, even. Everything in the animal kingdom knows that mutants are not natural, so they back off."

"How are you going to catch anything, then?" Axelle asked, eyebrow raised.

"Hit it from a mile away. How else?"

He left Chaser with Axelle and came back later with a bag full of Brahmin meat and a box of sugar bombs, which Axelle quickly confiscated. "You, Jackson, do NOT need any sugar."

Since they had already set up a campfire earlier, Jackson started cooking enough Brahmin for both of them, chatting away the whole time.

"That fight from earlier was FREAKING AWESOME." Was one topic that came up.

"The fact that I'M the one who killed it, that was awesome." Jackson had quickly discovered that Axelle liked to rub that in.

"He was chasing _me _most of the time!" Jackson protested.

"Most of the time." Axelle leaned against a counter and put her hands behind her head.

"Okay, but it WAS my plan in the first place." There was a pause. "You know, for a second there I thought you were _finished._"

"Yeah, right."Axelle pretended to scoff. "What made you think that?"

"You learned to fly when he knocked over that big tin thingie."

"You mean the train." Axelle raised two amused eyebrows.

"Uh...yeah. Look, not everybody here knows what it is those were called before the Big Party."

"Big party?" Axelle asked.

...and just as she figured it out, "It was a real BLAST, remember?"

She punched his shoulder, snickering. "That is the worst pun ever."

"Hey, now, what else did you expect from me? A proposal?" He asked, also snickering.

"A joke more intelligent than THAT." She retorted.

Jackson feigned sadness. "Why, my dear, I am so very wounded by your steely-hearted contempt!"

"Easy there, Shakespeare." She said. "Or should I say...Howie?"

Jackson looked puzzled. "Who's Howie? Oh right...my first name." He grinned sheepishly.

She punched him on the shoulder. "Sometimes you're an idiot, you know that?" She smiled. "Bet you're a sweet one."

He blushed, and was embarassed to find out that he did. "You really think so, eh?" _Well obviously she thinks so, she wouldn't say it otherwise. _

She rolled her eyes slightly, still smiling warmly. "More so than Versing, even."

His eyebrows shot straight up, and he rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. Chaser looked at the two of them intently, and Jackson could swear that the dog was screaming '_Just kiss already!' _"Well, that's a bit of a tough act to follow..."

Axelle laughed, and Jackson felt her hand touch his, followed by her voice hitting his ears. "Oh, just take the compliment, Jackson!"

"Alright, alright!" He teased, his free hand held palm-out to indicate submission. "Thanks. It means a lot to me. And you? You're-well, you're special." Axelle opened her mouth to say something, but he cut her off. "-No, I don't mean in the mentally challenged way, either. Seriously-when's the last time I was serious?- I mean it. I've never seen anyone like you, and I mean that in a good way. Not really sure how else to describe i- GAH!"

Axelle laughed hysterically as Chaser came out of nowhere and tackled Jackson, deciding it would be a good time lick his face until it was slobbery and wet.

"Chaser! Chaser! CHASE! Come on, you, get off!" He playfully pushed his hound off of him, who promptly rolled onto his back and presented his belly to Jackson. "Tummy rub, eh? Oh, fine." Chaser's tongue lolled out of his mouth as Jackson complied with the dog's wishes. "Anyway, it's getting late, Elle, I think you ought to go to bed. I'll take first watch, bravely shoot any bad guy that dares threaten you, etcetera etcetera." His face was back to its usual smirk, the mischevious light back in his eyes (not that it really left.)

"Alright." Axelle hugged him from behind, surprising the hell out of him. "G'night, Howie. Watch out for those pesky elevators." The inside joke was enough to make him crack up.

"Sleep well. And don't worry, elevators only seem to hit _me, _so you should be fine."


End file.
